


Aftershocks

by goldfinch



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Brother-Sister Relationships, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Missing Persons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 12:50:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4920292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfinch/pseuds/goldfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The woman looks up. She’s smiling, but it’s a statue’s smile, cold and carved-in and meaningless. It makes Darlene’s skin prickle. It makes her wish for Henry’s gun. “I saw the sign,” the woman says.</p><p>“What sign.”</p><p>“Why—” she turns a little, pointing, her smile getting wider—“the one outside. F Society. Didn’t you realize?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftershocks

There's a peace that comes over a place after violence has passed through it. A silence. Darlene's never been in a war zone or even a natural disaster, but she imagines it would be something like this, when everyone's finished dying and the birds have come through to pick the bones clean. Times Square has been blocked off since last night, but the ground's still littered with discarded signs; there's a single shoe lying in the gutter across the street. She doesn't know why she focuses on that shoe. It's a Converse, big, probably a man's. The laces are missing. Darlene sucks down the last of her cigarette and then ashes it against the nearest wall.

This is always the worst part. The comedown.

Last weekend and the Monday after she relied on double espressos and a charged sense of recklessness to propel her through the last stages of the plan. Zero day, the party: it felt like flying, even if Elliot did do it all without them in the end. Romero was right about that, and Angela too, when she said it always came down to them to clean up Elliot's messes. But this time it doesn't. This time Darlene can shove it off onto E Corp and the rest of the world. This time, it's her mess too. Burnt-out fireworks brushed into the gutters, here and there a discarded mask. Usually the city would send people out to clean up, but they haven’t, and she doesn’t know that they will. Still, she likes the idea of all this sitting as it is, the advertisements flashing overhead without anyone here to see them.

"So take that, assholes," she says under her breath, then turns and walks back down the street. She ducks under the police tape, past the talking heads on the other side. It's still early, and the morning is gray and strange; the powerful camera lights would be blinding without her sunglasses. She flashes a peace sign over one woman's shoulder, then a grin.

The subway hasn’t been running since Thursday, but she has a bright yellow scooter parked a block or so away, wedged between cars so the police from the Times Square station don’t look too closely. It’s stolen. But the police have bigger things on their mind than stolen vehicles, or even break-ins—a lot of the businesses downtown were smashed up Monday night, but no one did anything about it.

She doesn’t know _what_ they’re doing, actually, if they’re doing anything at all. A lot of city agencies have ground to a halt, and the rest of the city isn’t any better. The last time she saw it this empty was during a snowstorm years ago, late at night, so bad even the taxis were hardly out.

An End of the World party, she called it on the flyers. It looks like she was right on the money. Ha.

Of the two of them, Elliot’s always been better at playing the long game. He can see the far-off end, the compounded result, and he’s patient—or maybe just cold-blooded. That’s something Darlene can never be. And tied to that is her inability to savor victory. She’d been giddy when it happened, but it’s like doing coke; it hits fast, and dies away just as quickly. She saw the end of it on Monday, watching all those people dance in the red-lit rooms of the arcade. She heard them singing along to Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s ’Got Your Money’ and felt the joy go out of her even as she insisted it had been a success. It had been a success, of course. It was just that now it was over. There was nothing more for her to do.

She parks her scooter down the street from the arcade, just in case, and walks the rest of the way with her phone in her hand. Henry tried to call her, but other than that, she has no new messages. No word from Elliot.

Before she came back to the city they went for years without speaking, but she’s been seeing him a few times a week since then and she’s surprised how much she misses him. And the hack’s over, so it’s not even about that. She just misses his awkwardness and his brilliance, his intent focus, his jokes that sound more like questions.

 _Whr the fuck r u?_ she texts, head down as she comes into the arcade. There’s no one there, of course. Which is nice most of the time, now that she’s basically living here, but she gets lonely sometimes and it would be nice to have company. Something else Elliot overlooked. For all of his talk at the beginning—because he’d contacted her, not the other way around like Angela thinks—he’s been a pretty shitty brother. And yeah, he’s been dealing with his own stuff, sure, but she traveled cross-country for him, for his dream; it became her dream, too.

She strips off her jacket in the back room, snagging a cup-a-soup from the stack. The concessions area has a sink, where she’s been washing her face and brushing her teeth every morning, and a microwave, where she’s been reheating Chinese takeout and boiling water. It’s not the most glamorous place she’s ever stayed, but it’s not the worst either. The free popcorn’s _awe_ some, and Elliot got them what’s probably about the fastest internet on the planet. So. Cup-a-soup, then the internet, maybe a Netflix movie. That’s what she’s thinking as she’s turning around.

But when she comes out of the back, she sees a woman in the games room walking toward her, looking down, touching one of the new laptops. She’s wearing a long cream-colored coat and her hair is a beautiful brown fall over one shoulder, as smooth and clean as a shampoo commercial. Clean. That’s the word that comes to mind when Darlene looks at her. Everything about her, from the line of her coat to the neatly trimmed nails curled around the handle of her purse, is clean. And she looks so comfortable here, despite her appearance, despite and the dust and grime they haven’t had the chance to clean up yet. There’s still a trash bag full of Dixie cups out back, and the bathroom smells faintly of vomit, despite the lysol Darlene splashed around the next morning. But this woman looks like she’s browsing the racks at Nordstrom or Barney’s or wherever people like her shop.

“What are you doing here?” Darlene asks.

The woman looks up. She’s smiling, but it’s a statue’s smile, cold and carved-in and meaningless. It makes Darlene’s skin prickle. It makes her wish for Henry’s gun. “I saw the sign,” the woman says.

“What sign.”

“Why—” she turns a little, pointing, her smile getting wider—“the one outside. F Society. Didn’t you realize? I assumed that was why you chose the name you did.”

Because the ‘u’ and the ‘n’ in the original sign fell off. That’s right. This place used to be called Fun Society. Elliot came up with the name last year but Darlene thought he meant Fuck Society; she thought he came up with it all on his own. The woman’s leaning against the table a little, now, one palm laid flat against it. Over her shoulder, the pinball machines have began to sparkle and flash, a cheery wash of color that only makes the woman’s smile more unsettling.

“So you just drove around town until you found it, did you?” Darlene asks.

“Oh no. My husband, you see, he’s involved in your little group. He told me it was on Coney Island, and after that it was just a matter of driving up and down the streets. It’s not a very big place, you know.”

Darlene blinks, still stuck on the fact that this woman, in expensive clothes, with a face as pleasantly inscrutable as the Mona Lisa, is married to someone in fsociety. Romero’s not married; she knows that. And Trenton’s parents are too traditional. Jesus fucking Christ, is she married to _Mosley?_

“Remind me, what’s your husband’s name again?” she asks. The woman’s face goes still. “For that matter,” Darlene snaps, seeing an opportunity, “what’s yours?”

The woman presses her lips together, and just like that she’s in control again. It’s fascinating to watch, like seeing stagehands bring out set pieces. The eyes soften and then shine; the mouth pulls up into something pleasant. The woman steps forward. “My name is Joanna. My husband is Tyrell Wellick, and I would like very much to know where he is. We’ve only just had—”

“Fuck you.” A hot flare of anger snaps through her, and she feels her hands clench into fists. She’s been in fistfights before, mostly with boys, twice with girls; she’d gladly pummel this woman’s face in. “You’re married to an E Corp executive? Why the fuck would we let someone like him even set foot in this building? Get the fuck out of here.”

“Oh, he doesn’t work for E Corp anymore. They fired him. I believe that’s why he came here, why he lent your little club his support.”

Darlene laughs, derisive but somehow manic, too. Little club? “Do you realize what we did, over the weekend?” she asks. “Do you realize the metric ton of shit we brought down on the country—on the world? Lady, I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but lemme tell you something: you are wrong on so many levels.”

Joanna’s smile doesn’t fall, then; if anything, it grows. “The boy who leads you, he’s a nervy little thing, isn’t he.” There’s such a mix of threat and pleasantry in her body language that Darlene isn’t sure which to read. She wants both to smile and to bare her teeth. “He came to my house on Monday,” Joanna says, “looking for my husband. He has dark hair, and eyes like a hunted thing. Where is he now?”

A shiver runs down Darlene’s spine. Elliot didn’t come to the party, but he’s always been terrible with social things and she didn’t expect him to make an appearance. The radio silence was more worrying. And now this. Darlene lowers her voice. “You know where he is?”

Joanna tilts her head a little. “Tell you what. Why don’t we make a bit of a trade? You tell me where my husband is, and I’ll tell you where your friend is.”

“He’s my brother, you bitch, and I already told you, I don’t know where the hell your husband is. I’ve never met him before in my life. But if you hurt Elliot—if you so much as touch him I swear—”

“Then it looks like we’re at a bit of an impasse.”

Darlene glares at her. She wishes she could spit acid, or shoot laser beams from her eyes, something to wipe that smile off Joanna’s face. As it is….

“Well as long as we’re sitting here,” she says as casually as she can, stepping toward the concessions stand, “you want some popcorn? It’s fresh. No butter. You look like the kind of woman who’s careful about what she eats.” And it looks like Trenton popped another batch when she was here. What’s in there is fresh; she can smell it in the air, still. But Elliot had been so insistent about not taking the gun, and no one’s mentioned finding it; it has to still be there.

“Oh, not at all.” Joanne’s still smiling. “Two months ago I ate an entire chocolate cake by myself.”

“Whoopee,” Darlene mutters, and plunges a hand into the popcorn. She shovels fistfuls into a paper bowl from the party, feeling for the gun at the same time, but it isn’t there. She gets all the way down to the bottom and along the edges: nothing. She remembers what it felt like, and where she pushed it in; she knows where it should be. And now she knows where it isn’t. “Fuck.”

From behind her, very pleasantly: “Something the matter?”

“Nothing, other than the fact that you know where my brother is and won’t tell me.” Darlene says, turning, trying to keep her face straight. The question is, who has the gun now? Not Elliot. Someone from the party? Could Trenton or Mosley or Romero have come across it and kept it, and not said anything? And yet, at the same time, it doesn’t matter who has it. It isn’t here when she needs it: that’s the important thing. She hands over the popcorn. Joanna accepts it, then lays it to one side and doesn’t look at it again.

“Your brother Elliot—” she says his name carefully, deliberately— “told me he didn’t know where Tyrell was, that he hadn’t seen him for days. I don’t believe that.”

Darlene rolls her eyes. “Listen to me: Elliot’s never met any E Corp executives, and if he did he’d probably spit in their faces, not invite them along for the ride. E Corp’s the reason our father’s dead, okay? Elliot hates them, and he hates what they stand for, and so do I. He wouldn’t cooperate with someone from there if it was the last thing he did."

Joanna doesn’t say anything. Darlene can see her thinking, though, even if she can’t tell what those thoughts are. “I don’t know where Elliot is,” Joanna says eventually. Her voice is as calm as it’s been since she walked through the door, and there is no trace of regret or sorrow in it. It’s simply as though she’s come to a decision, as though some scale has tipped, and it is no longer worth her time to continue. “I didn’t kidnap him,” she says. “He walked away from me on Monday and I haven’t seen him since, just like I haven’t seen my husband.” She pauses. “We just had a baby, you know.” When she looks up, her eyes are dry but soft. Darlene doesn’t know if she can trust that look. “He needs his father, and I need my husband.”

Is that the truth?

When she and Elliot were kids, Elliot was close with their dad, even with everything that happened. He was a decent parent most of the time, but weak, prone to ignoring Darlene, prone to flashes of temper and inscrutable motivations, and their mom was no better. She was worse after their dad died. Of course Darlene knew, in a foggy sort of way, that the things their mom did to Elliot were worse even than the things their dad had done, but she was the younger sibling, and often away; she wanted to go away forever. And as soon as she could, she did.

She feels no guilt over it, though people have tried to make her feel guilty. She did what she had to. Henry was wrong about a lot of things but he was right about that: she survives. But she cares about her brother, too, whatever Angela thinks—she came all this way for him, didn’t she? She wrote the code that brought down E Corp, and she did that because he asked her to.

“Sorry you wasted the trip,” she tells Joanna. Her voice is dry. She can’t help it. “You’d better go. And you’d better not tell anyone about this, either.”

Joanna’s look is lofty, almost amused. “I don’t care what you’re doing here.”

“Even though your husband obviously does?”

She presses her bag against her side, then turns toward the door. Past the skiable games, the pinball machines, the popcorn machine. “Especially then. It was a mistake for him to come to you, of course, but I don’t think he realizes that yet.”

“I told you, he didn’t join us.” Darlene leans out of the arcade, gripping the sides of the doorway, and shouts after her, “He’s never even been here!”

Joanna doesn’t look back. Her car is a clean white SU, with rental stickers on both side windows. The brake lights flicker as she drives away. Darlene watches until it’s disappeared around the corner, then digs her phone out of her pocket and scrolls to Elliot’s number. Again, no answer. “Answer your fucking phone god damn you!” she shouts at the machine, which informs her politely to leave a message. “Some really weird shit’s going down over here, Elliot. What’s going on? And where are you? Call me, damn it—let me know you’re okay.”

She can’t just sit around the arcade all day, though, that much is certain. And if Elliot’s not answering, or not home, then there’s only one other person who would know if what Joanna said would true.

Elliot was the one who made the rule about no phone numbers, no emails, no connections. She never asked him how he found the others the first time, but after a while it became clear that not everyone was cut from the same cloth. They didn’t all want the same thing. Or they did, but they didn’t want it for the same reasons, and that was why Darlene followed Romero home one day. He’s the only one whose address Darlene knows, only because she doesn’t trust him enough not to. Elliot gets blind about things sometimes. Sometimes, she has to look out for him. Romero’s good but he wasn’t as supportive of Elliot as Darlene thought he should have been. He answers the second time she rings the doorbell, though.

“Darlene,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

She can smell bacon and toast on the air, and thinks fleetingly of the cup-a-soup back in the arcade. “Listen, before you get all butt-hurt about me knowing where you live, I just want some information. It’s important, okay? And I don’t have your number, obviously, so….”

Romero looks at her, dark eyes tired and resigned. There’s a longed, stretched silence, and then she feels it change. “Okay,” he says. “What do you need?” He doesn’t invite her in, though. Apparently he wants to have this conversation on his porch, between a trellis of bright red trumpet flowers and a spilling-over pot of ivy. Darlene looks at the plants, the porch, then at Romero. She raises an eyebrow.

“Seriously?”

He doesn’t move. “Are you going to ask your question or not?”

“Ugh, _fine_. Look, Elliot never brought anyone else by the clubhouse when I wasn’t there, did he?”

“No,” he says dryly, with an obvious bitterness she doesn’t care enough to analyze. Sometime since he opened the door, he’s crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. Under the bacon and toast is the faint smell of wet earth, and she tries to remember if he ever said anything about gardening or animals or anything. She can’t remember, although the potted plants certainly suggest it. “Our fearless leader was hardly there at all, as far as I know,” Romero says.

“No one named Tyrell Wellick?”

He pauses at that. “E Corp’s old CTO?”

Fuck. Joanna was telling the truth about that much, then. Darlene grits her teeth, says, “Yeah, him.”

“No, but Elliot knows him. Wellick was at Steel Mountain when we dropped the raspberry pi; Mosley and I heard them talking on the radio.”

The bottom drops out of Darlene’s stomach. One hand closes, very slowly, over the railing that runs along one side of Romero’s porch. She can feel the paint digging up into the space under her nails. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. He wouldn’t say how he knew him, though—I asked. I thought it was fishy, but Elliot went through with everything, do or die, so. I don’t know.”

“What the fuck?”

“Yeah,” Romero frowns, “that’s pretty much what I asked him.” There’s another long silence, and then he raises an eyebrow. “You have any other pressing concerns?”

“No,” she says drily, “I think that’s it, thanks.”

She turns around before Romero can close the door on her, letting out a short, frustrated breath. _Fuck, Elliot. What’s going on?_ She calls him again, but there’s no answer—he might be sleeping, she tells herself, not really believing it, or his phone might be dead. She tries again and then calls Angela. The sun’s starting to really rise now, and in the light she looks up and up into a never-ending sky, blue as an old computer game or a test-pilot’s hallucination. All of a sudden the world seems somehow unmanageable. Romero said Elliot knew Tyrell Wellick, but if Darlene doesn’t know even these things about her brother, how is she supposed to find him?

“Darlene?”

She closes her eyes. “Hello to you too.”

“What? Oh, hi. Sorry,” Angela says, “I’ve been at work practically all night; I’m exhausted.”

“You should quit. E Corp’s doomed anyway.” There’s a long pause, and Darlene’s not sure if she’s waiting for Angela to laugh or agree with her. “Look,” she says, “you haven’t heard from Elliot, have you?”

“Again?” Angela sounds exhausted too, but Darlene has no room for gentleness or patience. Not now. “I haven’t, no,” Angela says. “I stopped by his apartment on Tuesday like you asked, but he wasn’t there. Which I told you.”

“You’re sure?”

“I stood there knocking on his door for like, five minutes, yeah.” There’s a pause, and Darlene imagines the graceful arch of Angela’s neck, turned toward something else. Ever since she started working for E Corp she’s been more distant, less accommodating. They had a moment at the old house, running from the weird dad Darlene has never met or seen, but Angela’s withdrawn since then. Understandable, given where she works now, given what’s been going on with the riots, the collapse of public infrastructure, the panic and rage and joy everywhere, from everyone. But still.

“You didn’t go in? So he could have been in there?”

“I mean, maybe? But I was knocking pretty hard—some woman down the hall actually came out and yelled at me. So I’m pretty sure he wasn’t.” Another distracted pause. Does she know something? Did she see Elliot and just won’t say? At the Queens Museum she accused Darlene of swanning in and messing up Elliot’s apparently perfect life—which, from what Darlene’s heard, couldn’t be further from the truth—does she still believe that?

“Angela if you know something—I just want to know where he is, okay? I’m worried about him. I’m his sister.”

“Yeah, and I was his fiancé.”

“For all of about five seconds,” she snaps, and then winces. That just sort of slipped out. She means it and she doesn’t; she’s angry at Elliot, and afraid for him, and frustrated. She shouldn’t have said it, though, because now—

“ _Wow_.”

“Angela—”

“No, I’ve gotta go. They need me here. Good luck, Darlene,” she says flatly. And then she hangs up.

Darlene makes a face at the phone, pulling it away from her ear. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it!” she says to the dark screen, frustrated enough to want to hurl it across the street. She still hasn’t heard from Elliot, and the fear she felt when Joanna was around hasn’t quite faded. She’s anxious, worried—is this what Elliot feels like all the time? Because it sucks. It’s made her next action clear, though. She has to go visit Elliot’s apartment herself.

When she gets there, the building looks the same as it always has. There is no sign of whether Elliot’s there or not, but then of course there wouldn’t be from the outside. It takes her about two minutes longer than it should to get inside, though, because Elliot’s had the locks changed again.

The kitchen light is on, but Elliot isn’t in the kitchen. She drops the doorknob onto the table with a loud clunk, glancing around the living room next, then poking her head into the bathroom. She even looks in the tub, because he used to hide there when they were both kids. He said it made him feel safe, because he’d read somewhere that the bathtub was where you were supposed to go in a hurricane, and their mother was like a hurricane when she was angry.

That was the first time Darlene really understood what was going on. The first time she regretted. And her regret had grown larger and larger until finally she’d had to run, or risk losing herself to it too.

“Elliot?” she calls, turning toward the bedroom. But someone’s already standing in the empty doorway, with a suddenness that nearly makes Darlene drop her phone. “Fuck!”

“Hello,” he says.

It isn’t Elliot. In fact it isn’t anyone Darlene knows at all; he’s not from fsociety, and he’s no one Darlene recognizes from the periphery of Elliot’s life, either. He’s wearing a dark sweater and striped pajama bottoms, and his face is as calm and still as a tiger’s between the trees.

“Who the fuck are you?” Darlene asks. “Why are you in this apartment?”

“I’m a friend of Elliot’s. I’m staying with him for a while. Is that a problem?” His expression is polite enough, but there’s a clear dare there: tell me it’s a problem. Do it. And Darlene’s never been one to back down from a challenge.

“It sure is, cause he’s not here,” she snaps. “Who are you?”

He smiles—not close-lipped, but a politician’s smile nonetheless. A businessman’s. “My name’s Tyrell,” he says, “and you must be Darlene. Elliot’s told me so much about you.”

He’s clearly expecting her to relax, maybe reach out and shake his hand, and smile, and say, oh, yes, I’m sorry, it’s nice to meet you. He’s charming, in a practiced sort of way, like Henry had been when she first met him, before she tore into him for supporting big government, and he shoved her up against the wall of the bar’s bathroom and pressed his face between her legs. Now Darlene looks at Tyrell, at his smile, and just thinks: fuck. Romero was right. More than that, Joanna was right.

“And your wife told me so much about you,” she says, gratified to see the way his face freezes up, how his body goes strange and hunched-in, as though he’s suddenly forgotten what to do with his hands, his arms, his shoulders. He tries to fix it. He lowers his shoulders and smiles, but it’s no good, she’s seen him. It doesn’t make her feel any better.

“When did you see her?” he asks. “ _Why_ did you see her?”

“She stopped by the clubhouse—which she said you told her about.”

“I didn’t—”

“Whatever, you said it was on Coney Island. That was enough for her.”

For a second she thinks he’s going to bolt past her out the door, he looks so panicked, but he just drags a hand through his hair, then across his mouth. “When was this?”

“Like, maybe an hour ago.”

“Did you tell her where I was?”

“I didn’t _know_ where you were, you idiot. But she told me she had Elliot.” Now she’s thinking maybe he does. Someone has to have him, if he didn’t answer his phone for nearly a week, if he didn’t answer the door for Angela.

But Tyrell’s shaking his head. “No. No, she doesn’t. He’s here. Not here in the building, but he just went out to get food. He’s only been gone—” he glances at his watch— “nine and a half minutes.”

He’s here, then. He’s been here all along, the little shit head.

Tyrell stares at her for a long moment and then walks, distracted, back to the bed for his phone.

“That your wife you’re texting?” she asks, watching him cover a yawn with his palm. He has a strange, inhuman look, even sleep-rumpled and slow; he looks like a robot, Darlene thinks. Perfectly carved face, perfectly blue eyes, perfectly blond hair.

“Elliot,” he says, then pauses, then lays his phone aside. It gets lost a little in the covers—Elliot’s covers—but Darlene still sees when the screen lights up just a few seconds later. He has a text. No, not a text; Darlene watches, in silent disbelief, as he lifts the phone to his ear and says her brother’s name. Her brother, who has apparently just been ignoring her texts and messages for the last four days, who has apparently just been hiding out in his apartment with the ex-CTO of the company that killed their father, letting him sleep in his bed, letting him eat his food, and feed his fish, and put his clothes in his closet. What the fuck?

The conversation he has is short, and not particularly illuminating. “Your sister's here. Yes, just now.” Silence. “I’m aware.” Pause. “Of course not—she picked the lock.” And then, softer, after a few stuttering moments have passed: “Elliot, it will be alright. Where are you now?” Pause. “Okay. I’ll see you soon.” It’s an oddly domestic exchange, and Darlene wonders how long Tyrell has been here. Since Tuesday, when Angela came by?

Earlier?

“He’ll be back in a couple minutes,” Tyrell tells her.

She makes a sound of acknowledgement in her throat, looking around the half-lit rooms. The bedroom is still dark, the curtains drawn, which is the only reason she hadn’t seen Tyrell there when she first came in. Everything else is surprisingly neat—even the garbage has been taken out, which Elliot never seemed to have done when she visited before. Maybe Tyrell did it. She settles against the counter to wait, aiming for insouciant cool, unsure if she achieves it. It doesn't matter, though. Tyrell's looking intently at something on his phone; he's not paying attention to her at all.

“Where did he go?” Darlene asks.

“I don’t know.” Tyrell pauses, then looks up, head tilted to one side very slightly. “But he’s back; I just heard the door.”

Then Darlene hears footsteps, quick and light from one end of the hallway to the other to stop. She hears the cheerful jangle of keys, then a pause, probably when he finds out his key isn’t working because she’s taken the whole knob off again. The door swings open, and then there he is.

“Darlene,” Elliot says, and then nothing else. His eyes are impossibly wide, the way they looked after he tried to kiss her down on Coney Island, just before he turned around and ran. “Um,” he says. He looks pleadingly toward Tyrell. “I—”

Darlene waits, but when it’s clear Elliot isn't actually going to say anything, she crosses her arms and lowers her voice. “How about you explain to me what E Corp’s ex-CTO, the most wanted man in America, is doing in your apartment. And then how about you tell me why you’ve been ignoring my calls.”

“I—” Again that startled, deer-in-the-headlights look. Again a desperate glance toward Tyrell.

“Don’t fucking look at _him_ , Elliot, just tell me the truth!”

“He—helped me. I did some stuff, over the weekend, stuff I don’t remember. Bad things. Mr. Robot told him—”

“Mr. Robot?”

“That’s what I called Dad, before I knew it was Dad. I was, uh, hallucinating him? Or am, but—okay, please don’t freak out? Mr. Robot told Tyrell that if he did something for him, he’d, uh….”

“Kill Scott Knowles for me,” Tyrell says, so casually that Darlene does a double-take. Tyrell steps forward, just enough to put him at Elliot’s shoulder. “It was staged as a suicide, of course, and in the letter Scott left he also very helpfully confessed to murdering his wife. It was perfect. I never would have thought to do that.” He’s talking to Darlene, but he’s looking at Elliot—with something dangerously close to awe. But it means no one sees how Darlene has to close her eyes, and take a deep breath.

“Darlene.” Elliot’s voice. She opens her eyes to find him staring at her, very intently. “I don’t even remember doing it,” he says. He sounds sincere, but then he’s always been good at telling people what they want to hear. Except really, Darlene doesn’t care that he killed someone. That’s always been his line in the sand, not hers. She cares more that he hasn’t called or texted her in nearly a week, that when he needed someone he went to E Corp’s ex-interim CTO instead of her.

“When I gave you that gun,” she says quietly, “I wanted you to be able to protect yourself, because I couldn’t do it for you. Not when we were kids, and not now. I helped you start fsociety because you said it was something you wanted, do you remember that? I wanted to see you happy, for once in your life.”

“That’s not true though,” Elliot says, eyes so wide she can see the whites all the way around. She worries about him when he looks like that. It makes him look unhinged. “Not really, anyway. You wanted to tear everything down more than I did.”

“Maybe. But I couldn’t have done it by myself. You probably could have, but you asked for my help, and I said yes.”

“I—” He stops, then, face screwed up in confusion or denial. “I wasn’t… myself.” He flinches, then, at nothing she can see, but when he looks at her again his gaze is more determined than before.

“And what about him?” Darlene jerks a thumb toward Tyrell.

Elliot blinks at her, but the determination doesn’t leave him. Darlene wishes it would. “He helped me,” he says. “I couldn’t have done it without him. And... without him, I’d be a lot worse off than I am. Monday wasn’t a great day for me.” Something in the way he says that makes it sound like it’s actually a colossal understatement.

Darlene looks at him, then, really looks at him. The same dug-in circles under his eyes, the same old hoodie, the same uncertain hunch of his shoulders. “You’re okay, though?” she asks lowly. She’s trying not to cry again. “I mean really?”

He shrugs. “I feel better now than I did on Monday.”

It will have to be enough, Darlene thinks, and surges forward, ignoring how tight he goes under her hands. “Stop it,” she says into the prickly start of his hair. “I’m your sister and I love you, and you can hug me once in a while. You already tried to kiss me.”

Elliot laughs a little. “I won’t do it again, I promise,” he says, but his body goes quiet in her arms, and he actually reaches up and hugs her back, just a little. His hands on the backs of her shoulder blades. His hands warm on the curves of her shoulders. “Do you, uh, want some food?" he asks when he's pulled back. "I got Chinese.”

“From the place next door, I bet,” Darlene says, and sure enough Elliot turns away, embarrassed. And then she grins, and shoves at his arm. “Absolutely, I’m starving. What have you got?”

Elliot’s ordered spring rolls and lo mien and orange chicken and some sort of stir fry deal with what look like snow peas and bits of beef, and Darlene immediately empties half the orange chicken onto one of Elliot’s sad, college-kid plates, then perches on the windowsill because there aren’t enough chairs for all three of them. She doesn't bother with chopsticks. She uses her fingers, and looks out the window as she eats.

The sun has risen fully by now, at nearly eleven, a clean bright light that makes the city look different—less lived-in maybe, or less filthy. She has to squint against it, and can’t see whatever trash she’s probably actually looking at. Traffic isn’t bad either. There are people out on the streets, on bicycles and scooters and occasionally in cars, but the gas stations aren’t taking credit cards anymore, and people are starting to run out of cash. The city’s atmosphere has changed since Monday. She can sense the precipice a few steps out, even if she can’t see it, or how long the drop is; at the bottom is where the world will start to fix itself. Where it will have to, or fall apart completely.

She looks back toward the table, and nudges Elliot’s shoulder with the side of her leg. “Hey.”

“What?” he asks, looking up. The lo mien he has in his chopsticks slides off back onto his plate, but he doesn’t notice; Darlene stifles a laugh.

“Nothing," she says. "Just, pass me the rest of the orange chicken, would you? These things are goddamn delicious.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://furs-and-gold.tumblr.com/)!


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